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2023-019-FB-UA, 2023-020-FB-UA
Today, the Oversight Board selected a case bundle appealed by a Facebook user regarding two videos that feature a discussion with a fruitarian about her dietary decision to primarily consume fruit juices. In both videos, the woman discusses the effect her diet has on her own physical health, including claiming that her acne has disappeared, her legs are no longer swollen, and that she now has a lot of energy and mental sharpness. She addresses what she anticipates will be “comments about alleged anorexia that may come” by saying that it was normal for her to lose weight and appear “quite slim” and that she has “fully recovered” after initial weight loss by “only eating fruit, fruits, vegetables, avocado, etc.”
Meta determined that the content did not violate our policy on Suicide and Self Injury, as laid out in our Facebook Community Standards, and left the content up.
Meta removes any content that “encourages suicide or self-injury” including content that “contains instructions for drastic and unhealthy weight loss when shared together with terms associated with eating disorders.” However, in this case, the content did not violate this policy because the woman neither described her experience with the fruit juice diet as being undertaken to lose weight nor encouraged others to make the same dietary choices. Furthermore, the usage of the term anorexia was not used to encourage or promote eating disorders but merely to disavow anticipated criticism.
We will implement the board’s decision once it has finished deliberating, and we will update this post accordingly. Please see the board’s website for the decision when they issue it.
Case decision
We welcome the Oversight Board’s decision today on this case. The board upheld Meta's decision to keep up both posts so we will take no further action related to this bundle or the content.
After conducting a review of the recommendation provided by the board in addition to their decision, we will update this post.
Recommendation
Recommendation 1 (Assessing Feasibility)To not create financial incentives for influential users to create harmful content, Meta should restrict extreme and harmful diet-related content in its Content Monetisation Policies.
The Board will consider this implemented when Meta's Content Monetisation Policies have been updated to include a definition and examples of what constitutes extreme and harmful diet-related content, in the same way that it defines and explains other restricted categories under the Content Monetisation Policies.
Our commitment: We are committed to engaging with experts around treatment of eating disorders and disordered eating to inform our Suicide and Self Injury Community Standards. However, we will not update our Monetization policies to include a section on “extreme and harmful diet related content” as incorporating a workable definition into our monetization guidelines may not be enforceable beyond what is already covered by our Community Standards.
Considerations: At this time, we do not have plans to include additional categories of restricted or prohibited content to our Monetization policies, including a section on “extreme and harmful diet related content.” In consultation with experts in this space, our Community Standards already account for content that explicitly promotes eating disorders and we remove content that promotes, encourages, coordinates, or provides instructions for eating disorders. We also remove content with instructions for drastic and unhealthy weight loss when shared with terms associated with eating disorders. This also means that any content containing this would not be eligible to be monetized because it would already be removed from the platform. Additionally, we send resources to users when there are verbal or written admissions of eating disorders in their content and, when content is marked as disturbing, we demonetize it.
We’re aligned with the Oversight Board that the content from this case does not fall under the policy to remove content for promoting an eating disorder under our Community Standards. Moreover, our Branded Content Policies restricts sensitive content like weight loss products or services. Our Content Monetization policies define what content is eligible for monetization. We provide details on restricted and prohibited content for monetized content in our Transparency Center and Business Help Center. Relatedly, when content violates our Community Standards, we demonetize that content.
Although we will not update our Monetization policies for the reasons outlined above, in the next year we are committed to pursuing further engagements and gathering inputs from external experts to inform our Suicide and Self Injury policy—particularly in relation to eating disorders and disordered eating. While these are early stage discussions and we therefore do not know the final outcomes of these engagements, we will incorporate this recommendation into our considerations. Across our policies, we regularly conduct external engagements with experts to inform future and ongoing policy development. We will provide updates on the status of our engagements with the Board.
